


impossibility is a kiss away from reality

by lovelyleias



Category: Alien: Isolation (Video Game), Aliens: Defiance (Comics), Aliens: Resistance (Comics)
Genre: Canon Compliant, Drunken Confessions, F/M, Female Friendship, Gen, Missing Scene, Robot/Human Relationships, amanda just can't catch a break, davis does not want to be third-wheeling this conversation, kind of, or rather--painkiller confessions, zula needs a drink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-05-28
Updated: 2019-05-28
Packaged: 2020-03-26 11:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,424
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19004653
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovelyleias/pseuds/lovelyleias
Summary: After a harrowing escape, Zula and Amanda take a moment to discuss love, robots, and loving robots.





	impossibility is a kiss away from reality

**Author's Note:**

> This takes place during Aliens: Resistance #1. It's meant to be an additional moment after Amanda wakes up after being shot, but before she and Zula go into nine days of hypersleep.

Amanda’s face was pale and sweaty; her teeth were gritted together, and her clenched hands shook, but she didn’t make a sound. But hiding pain in front of Zula was pointless—she had practically made an art of it.

“Here,” Zula said, shaking out two painkillers into her hand. They were military-grade—heavy duty—and taking them right before going into hyper sleep would give Ripley a hell of a hangover afterwards but going in sober with an acid burn would only cause the pain to worsen when she woke up.

Ripley accepted the pills, shivering as she popped the painkillers into her mouth with her good arm, and then took the cup of water Zula passed to her. Her shaking hands caused some to splash down the front of her tank top, but she didn’t seem to notice as she drained the whole cup. When she was finished, she let the plastic cup fall to the floor, and leaned back in her pod with her eyes closed. Zula watched carefully as her friend’s jaw loosened, and her shaking slowly subsided. When Amanda opened her eyes again, they were glassy, as if she’d been drinking too much.

“Better?” Zula asked.

“Yeah,” Amanda’s voice was a little slurred. “These things work fast.”

“Good, that means they’re doing their job.”

“Mmm, a _very_ good job.”

Zula snorted. Once she was certain that Ripley was as well as she could be, she sat on the edge of her own pod and began to untie her boots. After everything that had happened that day, she was honestly looking forward to the long sleep.

“We made a good team today.”

Zula turned to Ripley in surprise. She’d thought that the pills would knock her out even before the pod closed. Amanda was sitting up, though, with her bare legs pulled up close to her chest. Her face was a little slack from the drugs, and her good arm was hugging her knees. She was facing away from Zula, toward the corridor. Seeing Amanda Ripley baring herself so vulnerably was a disconcerting thing.

 “Yeah,” Zula said, trying to keep her voice light. “The three of us kicked a lot of ass. Until you had to go and get yourself shot.”

Amanda smiled softly, but still didn’t turn to face her. Zula waited for her to say something, but it was a long moment before Ripley spoke again.  

“You love him, don’t you?”

Zula froze. Finally, Amanda turned back to face her. Her expression was still hazy, but the light in her eyes told Zula that she was still thinking coherently.

“What do you mean?”

Amanda chuckled humourlessly. “Davis.” 

 “That’s impossible,” Zula said immediately, with a voice like stone. She prayed that Davis was for some reason, _somehow,_ not listening, but she knew that couldn’t be true. “Amanda, he can hear you—"

“I see the way you talk to him,” Amanda interrupted, “and I hear the way he talks to you.” She rose unsteadily to her feet and staggered over to Zula. A cruel part of Zula’s mind half-hoped she’d pass out before she made it. But Amanda had never been one to quit, and so she managed to sit heavily at Zula’s side. “It’s not impossible, you know it’s not.” 

“How do _you_ know?” She’d meant for the remark to be biting, hoping that it would shake Amanda out of her painkiller-induced declarations, and shut her up. But the light faded from her eyes, and she seemed to stare at something Zula couldn’t see. Their shoulders brushed together—Amanda’s skin was clammy with sweat, but Zula let her lean in closer.

“There was this man, a synthetic,” Amanda sounded very far away. “Samuels…Christopher Samuels. He was the one that found me, you know. He found me, when everyone else wanted me to stay lost and out of the way. He told me he wanted me to have closure, and he gave me a place on the _Torrens_. He didn’t know what…what we were going to find on Sevastopol, I know he didn’t.”

Zula’s heart pounded in her chest. Without thinking, she took Ripley’s hand and gripped it tightly.

“He gave his life for me, he died for me,” Amanda’s voice fell to barely above a whisper. “And…I think he might have even loved me.” 

Zula had a thousand questions on her tongue but made herself swallow all but the most important one. “And you? Did you love him?”

“No,” Amanda said bitterly. Her words began to slow. “I didn’t…there wasn’t time. And I’d never imagined that a human and a synthetic could even…But I’ve thought about him every day for three years. And it makes me wonder—what if there had been time? What if he had survived to get off the station. Or what if I had gone back for him, like you went back for Davis? Would there have been a way to save him? What if things were different?... But they’re not.”

Tears streamed down Amanda’s face, but she didn’t move to wipe them away. Zula wondered if she even realized she’d been crying.

She stopped talking, and Zula let her sit in silence, her mind racing. Ripley had known—Ripley _knew—_ what it was to experience this strange, impossible love. Zula wasn’t an idiot, she recognized the feelings she had towards Davis, as unexpected as they were. But knowing that someone else could see it made her dizzy. Amanda’s head fell heavily onto Zula’s shoulder, and Zula realized that her friend was close to passing out again. 

“C’mon,” she helped Amanda to her feet. Ripley was much taller than she was, but Zula managed to half-carry her to the other pod. Amanda settled in, and Zula prepared to close the lid, when the other woman blinked her eyes open.

“He cares about you, Zula, he really does,” Amanda slurred. “Don’t fuck it up like I did, Hendricks.”

Zula sighed and closed the pod. “Sweet dreams, Ripley.”

When she was certain that Amanda was out, she crossed to the other side of the room and continued to undress. “Did you hear that?”

A pause. _“Yes,”_ Davis said. The echo of his voice suddenly seemed unbearably loud.

“What do you think?”

_“I think that she feels guilty about leaving this synthetic behind. But I can’t imagine there was much she could have done at the time.”_

“You’re being very careful to avoid talking about certain things she said,” Zula was amused, but more than a little apprehensive.

He paused again. _“The nature of the relationship she shared with that synthetic is interesting, don’t you think? She thinks she understood his emotions, and that they might have been able to eventually share a reciprocal romantic relationship—”_

“You’re getting closer,” Zula said dryly. 

_“Fine. What she said about us,”_ Davis was unable to express emotion through his voice, but Zula would have sworn that he sounded nervous. _“We’ve never talked about our…relationship. I just wish we’d had a chance to talk about it ourselves before someone did it for us.”_

Zula ran her hands through her hair. “It’s so complicated.”

_“Yes,”_ Davis agreed. _“It’s hard.”_

 Zula breathed out a laugh. “I’m glad we’re in it together, then.”

Davis paused again, longer this time. _“I wish I could be there beside you. I would like to sit beside you and hold you. It wouldn’t fix anything, but it would make it all feel a little easier, wouldn’t it?”_  

“Yeah,” Zula squeezed her eyes shut and tried to ignore the aching of her heart. “It would.”

She climbed in her pod and lay on her back, staring up at the ceiling. She thought of Amanda, meeting a man who cared for her against all reason, enough that it killed him, leaving her haunted by a love that never was. _Don’t fuck it up, Hendricks_. She took a deep and shaky breath. “Amanda’s right, Davis. I do…I do love you, as weird as that might sound. But you already knew that.”

_“It is weird, isn’t it? But I love you, too. And you know that. Someday things will be different, Zula. For all of us. Right now it’s hard, but we’re not alone.”_

Zula smiled; her heart felt very full. She glanced over at Amanda’s pod, and then back up at the ceiling. She pressed her finger against the auto-sleep button and lay down as the lid descended.

“Goodnight,” she said, just before the lid closed.

_“Goodnight, Zula,”_ Davis’ voice echoed through the ship. _“Sleep well.”_

**Author's Note:**

> I was working on a Ripley/Samuels oneshot right now (yes, instead of working on my longfic, _but_ it's going to have a hard E rating, so hopefully that makes up for it), and suddenly this scene came to me and I had to write it down. Let me know what you think! And, as always, I can be found at chryseis.tumblr.com


End file.
